This intriguing odyssey, set on the edges of time, encompasses biography, memoir, detective story, travelogue & history to tell a remarkable tale of East-West connections & a mysterious love. The author`s quest begins when the word `indigo` draws her to the illustrated journals, now in the British Library, of Victorian traveller Thomas Machell. She finds her life to have striking echoes of his, not least travels to & within India, a career in indigo, & a passion for journal writing. She is also intrigued by his aspiration to write `a novel in the form of an autobiography` & by his quirky watercolour sketches. Retracing his footsteps
- overland & by sea
- from his ancestral home in the hills & dales of northern England to remote parts of the Middle East & Asia, she is often in her own footsteps too. Machell of Crackenthorpe, born in 1824, first demonstrated his yearning for adventure when only twelve, & at sixteen left the family rectory to fulfil his childhood dream of travelling to the East. By chance, he witnessed many important historical events, including the infamous First Opium War & the Indian Mutiny that profoundly affected British-Indian relationships. Machell spent most of his adult life in India, `the land of my destiny` as he calls it; the author tracks him to the indigo & coffee plantations of rural Bengal & Kerala`s Malabar Hills, to little known regions of central India; to the China Seas & remote islands of Polynesia & through the deserts of Arabia. This spellbinding book brings to life Machell`s untold story, that of a spirited outsider at the time of the British Raj reaching into the future. Serendipity, intuition & an enchanting relationship, as well as the author`s quest to uncover the missing years of Machell`s life, give this book its magical extra dimension.